Jeffrey L. WilsonMetal Slug 3 (for PC)Metal Slug 3, one of the crown jewels in SNK Playmore's retro video game catalog, remains an exciting, well-crafted experience more than a decade after its original Neo Geo release.

Metal Slug 3, one of the crown jewels in SNK Playmore's retro video game catalog, remains an exciting, well-crafted experience more than a decade after its original Neo Geo release.

Run-and-gun video games have a long history of thrilling fans with high-octane, shoot-everything-that-moves action, but few do it better than SNK Playmore's Metal Slug 3. Originally released to the Neo Geo platform in 2000, the acclaimed Metal Slug 3 has appeared on nearly every console and handheld since then—and now it's available as a PC game. Metal Slug 3 is a genre masterpiece due to its charming (and hyper-violent!) graphics, tough-as-nails challenge, creative weapons, and refreshing level design. This Editors' Choice title is one of the best PC games available and, at just $7.99, it's a great buy, too.

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The BasicsLike the previous games in the series, Metal Slug 3 tasks you with destroying General Morden's Nazi-like army. Fortunately, you have a variety of fun and highly destructive weapons at your disposal, including machine guns, heat-seeking missiles, shotguns, grenades, and the heavily armored, tank-like Metal Slug vehicles. However, you'll quickly discover that the nature of the threat goes much deeper than the mustachioed military madman.

Metal Slug 3 is light on story—it's a port of a quarter-devouring arcade game, after all—but heavy on gameplay. Each weapon has a unique feel, and branching levels give you the option to take alternate paths through the game. Developer SNK Playmore also crammed Metal Slug 3 with varied enemy types, weapon-granting P.O.W.s, horizontal and vertically scrolling levels, and stages that take place on land, underwater, and in the sky. Metal Slug 3 tosses something new your way every few minutes to keep things fresh, and it's much appreciated.

Old School OptionsMetal Slug 3 is a short game that can be beaten in roughly one hour—if you take a trip to Settings and turn on Freeplay mode. If you're a casual Slug fan, the unlimited lives will prove useful as Metal Slug 3 is brutally hard and some deaths are extremely cheap. There are sections—boss battles, in particular—that seemed designed not so much for you to win by skill, but by whittling the boss down over time using many, many continues. One boss fired huge, screen-filling lasers that I simply did not know how to avoid. That makes sense considering the game's arcade roots—SNK Playmore wanted your quarters—but the tactic's a bit frustrating when viewed through the contemporary gaming lens. Still, if you count yourself as one of the most hardcore of the hardcore, you'll want to stick with the default arcade-style, five-lives-per-credit setting for a true challenge that will lengthen your time with the game.

On the topic of the arcade experience, you can play Metal Slug in its original 4:3 accept ratio, or go new school with a 16:9 layout. You can even turn on scan lines to replicate the retro monitor effect—it's very cool. If you played Metal Slug 3 in the arcades, the 4:3 aspect ratio and scan line combo is like a return to the arcade scene of yesteryear. Unfortunately, Metal Slug 3 doesn't offer a 1080p visual setting, but you can tweak the pixel count; the graphics options range from 800 by 600 to 1366 by 768. A video filtering option softens the pixels' rough edges, but makes the graphics less crisp.

About Those Graphics Metal Slug 3 was is an old game, but it remains a testament to 2D, pixel-based graphics. Every sprite pulsates with a meticulously animated energy, and death animations are hilariously gory. Air vent a giant crab with your machine gun and the enemy welts and explodes into a bloody mess. Navigate a bipedal Metal Slug and watch as its legs move with inhuman gait. Metal Slug 3 has a ridiculous number of animation frames that make it look like an interactive cartoon.

That said, the game's age shows in regards to its color palette; backgrounds are a bit dull and washed out compared to the foreground sprites. In addition, it's easy to lose track of your character when blasting enemies in co-op mode—the explosions and carnage sometime distract from the incoming enemy gunfire.

Do You Have the Mettle for Slug? Metal Slug 3 is a near-perfect run-and-gun game that manages to still feel fresh 24 years after its initial release. Immensely playable and chock full of gameplay options, Metal Slug 3 is a must-play PC game for those with itchy trigger fingers.

For more than a decade, Jeffrey L. Wilson has penned gadget- and video game-related nerd-copy for a variety of publications, including 1UP, 2D-X, The Cask, Laptop, LifeStyler, Parenting, Sync, Wise Bread, and WWE. He now brings his knowledge and skillset to PCMag as Senior Analyst.
When he isn't staring at a monitor (or two) and churning out Web hosting, music, utilities, and video game copy, Jeffrey mentors, practices Jeet Kune Do, blogs, podcasts, and speaks at the occasional con. He also collects vinyl and greatly enjoys...
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